Tufts University Art Gallery presents “Empire And Its Discontents,” which opens September 15 with work by 11 artists tied to previously colonized regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. ‘Empire and Its Discontents’ and more at Tufts; ‘Re-View’ and visiting faculty at Harvard; GASP’s Fourth Anniversary By RANDI HOPKINS | September 03, 2008

It was a sublime scene, even though the seven-foot-tall painting was cracked, threadbare in places, patched in others, and dulled by a gray-brown murk. Zhang Daqian’s imaginary landscapes, plus “A Tradition Redefined” By GREG COOK | December 31, 2007

“Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture in Classical Antiquity” presents striking evidence that the white marbles were once painted in bold Technicolor. Can a striking exhibit at Harvard really make us see ancient Greek and Roman sculpture — and the roots of racism — as we never have before? By GREG COOK | December 09, 2007

Glittering piles of cheap candies are probably Cuban-born artist Félix González-Torres’s most iconic works. Félix González-Torres at The Carpenter Center, Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting at the Sackler, and Chuck Close and Robert Storr at BU By RANDI HOPKINS | October 23, 2007

Sound is all around: pop music acts as a hair trigger for memory. Sound and video at MIT, “Eyewitness” at Axiom, Carolee Schneemann at Pierre Menard, and Kaspar König at the Sackler By RANDI HOPKINS | October 01, 2007

The grimy surfaces of walls, sidewalks, and utility poles in neighborhoods of San Juan have replaced canvas as a medium for Puerto Rican artist Rafael Trelles. Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Museum School, “Gods In Color” at Harvard, “Arts Of Japan” at the MFA, and the new Proof Gallery By RANDI HOPKINS | September 12, 2007

The Boston Cyberarts Festival arrives to blanket the town with an onslaught of visual-art events and exhibitions connected by their use of technology. The Boston Cyberarts Festival launches everywhere, Gabriel Orozco and Benjamin Buchloh converse at Harvard By RANDI HOPKINS | April 09, 2007

“Dear Diary: I know I should be asleep already, but I just can’t sleep if I don’t write this all down. I’ll burst!” Children’s-book illustrators at the New Art Center, Alexander Ross at WAM, and Hélio Oiticica at Harvard By RANDI HOPKINS | March 06, 2007

“Abstract painting” is a broad historical category that takes in everything from the utopian spiritual and formal purity of the early decades of the 20th century to the macho of the purely visual as championed by Clement Greenberg later in that century. 'Big Bang!' at the DeCordova, 'Classified Documents' at Harvard, 'Trans am' at the New Art Center By RANDI HOPKINS | January 09, 2007

Early video art set itself apart from movie-theater cinema by its grainy insistence on real time and real actions, as opposed to the dramatic conventions and fictions of big-screen blockbusters. Annual Wasserman Forum at MIT, Deb Todd Wheeler at Green Street, David Rees at Harvard By RANDI HOPKINS | November 08, 2006

Childhood in America comes under the artist’s gaze in Pine Flat , the fifth film by Sharon Lockhart, and it’s examined with precision and attention to detail. Sharon Lockhart’s ‘Pine Flat’ at Harvard, Frank Gehry and Matthew Barney Films at the MFA By RANDI HOPKINS | August 17, 2006

It’s always a treat to spend time in the several clustered museums at Harvard, where scholarly mini exhibitions co-exist with larger surveys and familiar favorites from the permanent collection complement surprises in the galleries. ‘The New Chinese Landscape’ at Harvard, Raked Sand at ArtSTRAND, Future Shock at Green Street By RANDI HOPKINS | August 08, 2006

The flowering landscape is more than just beautiful and awe-inspiring for East Asian artists and poets, who have always attributed layers of symbolic meaning and to nature’s blooms and branches. East Asian botanical motifs at the Sackler; Eighth Annual Lantern Festival at Forest Hills By RANDI HOPKINS | June 29, 2006

Summertime inevitably raises the question: what are we going to do with our crazy, hot selves? Summer Guide 2006: Cheap thrills from Bar Harbor to New Haven. Paw Sox, Penny Slots, and Ponies — so cheap, it might cost you By ELLEE DEAN | June 14, 2006

For his first major show in the US, Shintaro Miyake would create a pond filled with real water, a dam, beaver lodges, and drawings of beavers and kayakers. Shintaro Miyake’s beavers, Frank Stella’s stripes By GREG COOK | March 01, 2006

Rachel Perry Welty sees art where many of us see annoying little things to be thrown away or deleted: the funny-shaped plastic tabs cleverly invented to close the bag around a loaf of bread; the identifying stickers found on most fruit; answering-machin Traveling Scholars and rock posters at the MFA, student annual at the SMFA, and Islamic drawings at the Sackler By RANDI HOPKINS | February 10, 2006

There has been a great wave of Cute in Japanese contemporary art in recent years — colorful nodding mushrooms and balloons from Takashi Murakami, big-headed kiddies and doggies from Yoshitomo Nara, and Dark Cute in the form of movies like Hayao Miyazak “The Beaver Project”; documentary photos at BU, Stella at Harvard, and the opening of Second Gallery By RANDI HOPKINS | January 24, 2006